by-product-toyko

by-product-tokyo

Nigel Bertram, Shane Murray, Marika Neustupny

RMIT University Press, Melbourne

Published by RMIT University Press, an imprint of RMIT Publishing PO Box 12058, A’Beckett Street, Melbourne, Victoria 8006 Australia Telephone 61 3 9925 8100 Fax 61 3 9925 8134 Email: info@rmitpublishing.com.au http://www.rmitpublishing.com.au Publications Editor: Brenda Marshall Production Editor: Noè Harsel Production team Taiga Asai Paul Dash Nicholas Harder Matthew Herbert Anna Little Eric Werner

© School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, 2003.

Copyright of all drawings and photographs is held by the authors and contributors.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be printed or reproduced or utilised in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

All opinions expressed in material contained in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the publishers.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Bertram, Nigel Murray, Shane Neustupny, Marika By-Product-Tokyo ISBN 0 86459 238 8 Printed by Bambra Press 6 Rocklea Drive Port Melbourne, Victoria 3207 Australia

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preface

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reflection

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research, architecture, city

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by-product-tokyo

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research notes on method

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shinjuku station

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west shinjuku

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odaiba

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east shinjuku

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shimokitazawa

68

south shinjuku

76

shibuya

86

iconography

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bibliography 108

contents

participating students Jonothan Cowle Paul Dash Erica Diakoff Zoe Geyer Matt Herbert Nick Hubicki Alan Kueh Yiyan Lim Jessica Lynch Joseph Reyes

thanks to Jun Aoki Mike Austin Richard Fooks Momoyo Kaijima Hiroshi Kikuchi Daiju Nagaoka Kunio Nakai Hiroshi Nakao Lisa Negri Hugh O’Neill Kazunari Sakamoto Barrie Shelton Akira Suzuki Akiko Takahashi Mikiko Terauchi Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Akio Yasumori

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original publication (limited edition) 180 pages spiral bound, april 2001

preface

RMIT’s relationship with Tokyo Institute of Technology began in 1994 with a joint research project in the City of Ogaki in Gifu Prefecture. That project was part of RMIT School of Architecture’s continuing commitment to an engagement with the urbanism of its region. By-Product-Tokyo is the outcome of a new chapter in this dialogue with TITech. The project was instigated by Shane Murray in 1999 with the receipt of a grant to fund student exchange from the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific Association. Nigel Bertram and Marika Neustupny developed the research program and led the three-month project in Tokyo.

This book is itself a by-product of Tokyo, and its contemporary thought. It is an unexpected offshoot of an ongoing line of architectural research being undertaken by a group of Japanese architects and students centred at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to be exposed to, and to engage with that discussion over several years through our relationship with TITech.

This interaction was brought to a particular focus through the research published here, which is the product of a short but intense visit by ten RMIT University architecture students to Tokyo at the end of 1999.

We find it perfectly logical that the random arrival of a group of ‘outsiders’ into an already established local discourse should produce some type of curious offspring. Despite our outsider status we wished to avoid a position of passive observation and engage with this discourse, whilst also avoiding the direct imposition of pre-formed views onto the observed situation. Our aim has been to attempt an active and subtle participation while recognising that such an aim can at best only half-succeed. The resultant ‘half-truth’, however, has led to both the extension of a thread of that much larger project, and importantly, the creation of a new thing altogether. This to us is the value of cultural ‘exchange’.

Since returning from Tokyo, we have continued working together and utilising aspects of this methodology in Melbourne-based research, and this has served to clarify our reflections on the Tokyo material. Part of this reflection has involved the collation and re-formatting of the research material for an exhibition which also travelled to the University of Queensland in 2001. This exhibition was the catalyst around which we produced the first limited edition of By-Product-Tokyo, a recording of all of the work produced on location with additional material that extended and re-acknowledged the process of experience and analytical reflection. The essays in this current book are new, and they reflect our further re-consideration of the material through discussion with our students and peers.

Our engagement with Tokyo was made possible by the endless generosity extended to us by our Japanese hosts, in particular Kazunari Sakamoto, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, whose insights and knowledge helped form this work. The opportunity to even begin this project was made possible by generous funding provided by the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific Association. Both the Department of Architecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Architecture Program in the School of Architecture + Design at RMIT University provided invaluable support throughout the project.

We would like to sincerely thank the ten students who took part in this project, who embraced and gave their all to the entire experience – well beyond any academic requirement – and without whom, of course, none of this would have been possible.

Melbourne, 2003

reflection

Mike Austin

The study tour is a long established architectural institution and is regarded as especially important for antipodean architects, for whom design arrives in overseas journals, which reinforce the belief that architecture is only to be found in its natural habitat north of the equator. It is also assumed that famous buildings must be personally experienced and recorded with camera and sketchbook as evidence of eye-witness experience. The photograph or slide that is identical to the published one is a confirmation that ‘I was there’, but works against the one advantage of the outsider which is that everything is, initially at least, strange. So often the ubiquitous is not recorded before it disappears into the familiar.

This study of Tokyo by students from the RMIT University School of Architecture in Melbourne is not like this – it is not an album, a travel guide or a compendium.

Nor is it a typological study. Rather it is concerned with the atypical, investigating unforseen interstices and interesting gaps. The contingent, the makeshift and the temporary get recorded. It focuses on ‘functioning particularities’ as against determining rules. It is piecemeal and fragmentary, abandoning all ambition for, and pretence of, totality. It is concerned with the forces shaping the vernacular rather than the material and appearance of it.

Melbourne has appropriated Japan for some time.1 There is a major building by Kurokawa over the road from the RMIT School buildings and Robin Boyd wrote the first English language study of Kenzo Tange’s early work. These students sometimes refer back to Melbourne as a comparison with what they are studying to get a notion of complexity and scale, and in order to work with difference and what is already known.

Melbourne has also long been obsessed with the semiotic and this study pays attention to signage and advertising, both of which usually suffer architectural invisibility.

Few architects have thought about the design and architectonic of the neon sign, the traffic light or the ubiquitous ATM. In this study the proposition is that these machines become ‘armatures’ for urban ecosystems – indicating urban events and services. The vending machines are treated as artefacts, but not as aesthetic objects. Nor is the content or the meaning of the sign discussed. Instead it is the location and visibility of the sign (the architecture) that is described. This is a reverse design sequence in which the program is divined from the product. It also demonstrates that in the end architects have de-signs on everything that they see.

In some ways what is seen is out of the corner of an eye so that with its emphasis on by-product this research is somehow working across industrial design and townplanning, avoiding the banalities of so called urban design, which so often seem to end up becoming street furniture. Here, instead, the street furniture is carefully researched as indicating dense and complex urban eco-systems. Infrastructure is considered seriously.

Passages and tracks are seen as creating edges and opportunities for architectural investigation.

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The reader is brought to wonder how many of these systems are dependent on the self-surveillance of Japanese society. However this study has, it seems, located the unauthorised and illegitimate – contradicting the Western stereotype of Japan as utterly ordered and regulated. One also wonders if the work sanitises – the conditions of the homeless for instance? But then architecture has never known how to deal with the homeless, and do we Westerners not think that Japan launders and sanitises endlessly, always, anyway?

This is also research that allows the process to be shaped by the study material, so that it is a thinking of the city, where architecture as a singular object becomes secondary.

For instance, much of Tokyo life seems to occur underground where landscaping, entry, exit and movement are reversed and notions of façade disappear entirely. Elsewhere it is pointed out that building façades become covered in signs, recalling Semper’s proposition that the building is merely the support for a decorative surface.

Barthes wrote in Empire of Signs about Tokyo as ‘one of the two most powerful cities of modernity’ and this study suggests that Tokyo might be the realisation of collage city. Barthes describes ‘a graphic mode of existing’2 in ‘the system which I shall call: Japan’3 and again, to a Westerner, the graphic is everywhere. This was some years before Said (whose words initiate this study) exposed the dilemmas of orientalism but the overwhelming impression is of a graphic world from the home of calligraphy and the comic. This study has a staccato quality that is comic-like in its fragmented presentation, which aligns with the experience of a strange and complex city.

While the architectural norms of plans, elevations, sketches and axonometrics are used in this research, the drawings lack the materiality of the conventional architect’s rendering. In some ways they are more like drawings of models and indeed models are associated with product design. These are design diagrams, but their purposes are analytic.4 They are superimposed and multilayered with a range of influences and determinations and suggest the complex forces shaping the habitat.

In this research we might also ask about the role of the electronic both in the city and its documentation. The use of the computer in the presentation of the research is everywhere apparent and makes the many individual studies appear uniform. The work is consistent in its graphic representations. Barthes suggests that western art ‘transforms the “impression” into description’.5 All acts of description are also acts of appropriation and this study appropriates Tokyo. But it is the by-product that has been appropriated and this research is the production of architectural texts. This work is the making of an architecture of Tokyo.

Mike Austin is Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture at UNITEC, Auckland, New Zealand, where he teaches theory and design.

1

2 3 4 5

Eugenie Keefer Bell, ‘Interpretations of Japan in Australian architecture: an overview’, in John Macarthur and Antony Moulis (eds), ADDITIONS to Architectural History: XIX Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (available CD-Rom), Brisbane.

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, 80.

Barthes, ibid, 3.

Barthes speaks of Western discourse wanting to ‘represent or analyse reality itself’.

Barthes, op cit, 3.

Barthes, op cit, 77.

essays

research, architecture, city

Shane Murray

The problem then is to make the study fit and in some way be shaped by the experience, which would be illuminated and perhaps changed by the study.

Edward Said

To travel has always been an important, if not slightly problematic, aspect of architectural education. The grand tour, visits to the excavation site, the tourist’s ramble, and the canonical itinerary have been long considered influential aspects of the training of the architect. Our contemporary world complicates this through a proliferation of destinations and the threat of a corresponding uniformity within the travel experience.

In travel there is still, however, the residual implication that we replace distant knowledge and experience gained from second stage representation with the so-called authentic experience of actual encounter. In the past, tours were always associated with the idea of gain or reward, in particular the gift of knowledge. We now know that such a position is not neutral, that what we visit and what we take away as knowledge from such visits is not a transparent process. What we allow ourselves to notice is often what we bring along on the journey, rather than what we encounter at our destination. An aspect of the Picturesque Movement concerned itself with the visual editing of significant sites. This resulted in a particular model of vision and apprehension that still influences the manner in which we act as architectural voyagers and apprehend the material we encounter.

Despite these cautions we can also travel in a way that is open and critical, where we remain receptive to the possibilities of new insight and resistant to closure and the easy fulfilment of media templates of our destinations. In travel we can work with new colleagues, gain different perspectives and importantly reflect on what we have left behind. As Edward Said reminds us, it is in the possibility of change to our own preconceptions and the receipt of illumination that the value of these types of undertakings is founded.

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It would be difficult therefore to question the general merit of this travel experience in Japan. Architecture, however, is conventionally understood as subject to specific modes of conceptualisation and action. How might this experience in Tokyo connect to particular architectural concerns? If for Alberti the city was one single piece of architecture, now, when we ask our students to stand at Shibuya Crossing, we certainly have no expectation that they will be able to infer that city from the spectacle before them. How do we conduct an inquiry into this fantastic and, to our eyes, exotic material? Why in fact should we bother to do so? Isn’t it sufficient that our students have had the benefit of this immersive experience and the opportunity to reflect upon what they have left behind?

Over the preceding decade the School of Architecture + Design at RMIT University had engaged in several field trips to Asian cities. Much of the discussion surrounding these undertakings has concerned the role of architecture in the city, the nature of urbanism; the role of multi-disciplinarity in urban study; the inevitable internecine warfare that ensues and the vagaries of architectural fashion as one encounters different modes of engaging in architectural research on the city.

Importantly, an enduring aspect of these projects has been the implication that each one calls into question what the nature of architecture’s relationship to the city might be. It is in the very word ‘relationship’ that the symptoms of many of the difficult issues surrounding this question are entangled. Often as voyager architect there is the requirement to propose a project, a piece of urban architecture that would emerge from an investigation of the territory visited. Such a project would be assumed to ensue as a natural and connected consequence of the urban research. Inevitably, this would only occasionally ever be the case. There are two particular consequences that I find significant in this scenario. The first concerns the range of implications implied in the acceptance of a relationship between architecture and ‘the city’ and the second is concerned with how we authorise our architectural propositions, particularly when we call upon ‘the city’ to do so.

In the past it was often assumed that architecture and the city were somehow inextricably in dialogue; as if architecture and its urban field were composed of the same material – even if the material of the city could never be melded in quite the same way as an individual building. Increasingly many commentators have come to believe that the contemporary city now eludes our conception, that it has become a system impossible to picture as a totality. Several contemporary architects claim an authority for their work that resides in their projects being more appropriate to this changed urban condition.

They claim that their architecture is not subject to what they would term the nostalgia of historical context or the orthodoxy and irrelevance that earlier views of urbanism represent.

When Rem Koolhaas propagandises his architecture as more relevant to our contemporary urban condition he does so by comparison to what he views as the now nostalgic propositions of his predecessors, particularly Colin Rowe.1 For John Macarthur the issue here is the manner in which architecture appropriates ‘the city’. His concern is not the merit of either’s urbanism but the possibility of an urbanism itself. He observes that ‘there is no “the city” to be appropriated by architecture, there are only cities, and what can be said about them at a general level is vague, diffuse and susceptible to “mental and atmospheric turbulence”’.2 Macarthur believes that to claim otherwise is a nostalgia for the authority of kings when a sovereign could recognise the merits of architecture and authorise it to act on his behalf. As such he views urbanism as discussed by architects as a ‘theoretical space, a space in which the principal issues of the discipline such as its authority as knowledge and the meaning of orthography can be played out’.3 It would be foolish to dispense with the idea of any relationship between architecture and the city on the basis of these pronouncements. However, there is a certain merit lurking beneath these somewhat cathartic propositions. I believe their value lies in the admonishment to architecture to recognise where its domain lies and to begin to think about what is actually entailed in the modes of the discipline. This may initially seem a strange entreaty, but it is not so if we consider the widening gulf that has developed between what architects actually do and how they describe and authorise what they do.

Significantly it is particularly in its relationship to the city one finds that architecture, its explanation and its critical commentary have strangely parted.

When architects examine the city they sometimes attempt a type of conceit in which they portray their observations as neutral; as somehow naturally of the city; as prearchitectural. Often, however, such observations are quite explicitly determined by the

codes of the discipline. When Colin Rowe, through his students, proposed his collage plans for Rome, Buffalo or Harlem he was applying a pre-visualised architectural editing over portions of the city. These fragments were selected and then edited so that they would align with his preference for a field-like plan image. His projected new urban fragments and this selected adjacent material would coalesce into a type of seamless field painting.4 In so doing Rowe was relying on his essentially architectural construct of the city to authorise these architectural compositions.

An alternative version of this slippery engagement can be found in many recent projects on the city that utilise what is now known as datascape. Here we find architects undertaking analysis of the urban situation using methods and processes that traditionally lie outside the discipline. These processes are subsequently used to authorise architectural propositions that bear no relationship to the analytical process undertaken. Bart Lootsma in describing MVRDV’s use of datascapes observes that their use of representations of bureaucratic systems results in a type of ‘deconstruction’ rather than a ‘unifying technique’. This leads to design outcomes ‘apparently’ forming in the margins or interstices of the analytical process. Lootsma observes that ‘apparently that is because MVRDV conserves a secret diagram somewhere that really generates the designs’.5 These observations are not intended as deterrents to an engagement with the city.

They are presented as observations drawn to caution us to be wary of where our assumptions lie. In both Rowe and MVRDV there is much value to be derived from their distinctive inquiries. The value however is primarily directed back to how we conceive of architecture in the city rather than being able to actually reveal any absolute truth of the city.

A final caution remains in approaching the city of Tokyo. There is a nostalgic allure implicit in the mental image of such a city. This is founded on a type of doubled exoticism, the ‘oriental’ city conceived as the other of the European image of urbanism’s traditional ordered whole; now viewed as a contemporary corollary of our loss of any overarching urban image in the unknowable world city. Such a view can lead to a type of deliberate closure where we drift in a delirium of self-imposed disorientation refusing to believe that such a place could be subjected to analysis.

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How then have we negotiated this difficult terrain? In a provocative way this research project has irritated each of the themes I have been addressing. On one hand it avoids any instrumental conclusion by refusing to be connected to an architectural projection. Its concerns extend beyond the material city to include many of the activities that architecture excludes, edits out, or refuses as outside its provenance. Almost perversely, it achieves this by representing itself through the most architectural of methods – the isometric, the plan – those representational devices that deliberately avoid experiential representation and instead partake of a particularly architectural form of conceptualisation. These are representations that rely on a simultaneity of depiction that indicates the relative adjacency of the material under consideration. It is at once the domain of the map but in its vertical projection it enters an almost exclusively

architectural mode of engagement. However, what it reveals is often not architectural – it is in fact the material that eludes architecture.

In a very particular way By-Product-Tokyo has concerned itself with examining a city; not proposing architecture for a city or engaging in any of the other instrumental propositions that such projects might normally entail. An aspect of its contribution is to be explicit in revealing its own procedures. This research stands adjacent to a possible future design action. By not concluding in a design the resultant complex adjacency it establishes with design leaves future architectural propositions to seek their own authority. Conversely the architecturalised nature of the inquiry immediately establishes the provenance of the inquiry undertaken. This is a subtle but important realisation. If, as I have been arguing, architecture is currently confused about its legitimacy in relation to its own specific modes of production, the opportunity for this question to be reflected upon via an uncoupling of architecture and its traditional domain and to allow them to stand in a taut relationship is extremely valuable. This uncoupling is not intended to preclude architecture; in fact the interests of the research are to hope that such an inquiry would be contributory to an architectural proposition. The issue is then to create a pause in what is often a too hasty and ill-considered connectivity and to establish a space where the nature of such a relationship can be reflected upon. We might speculate as to whether this position is the flaw or in fact the value in this project. I would certainly conclude that it is contributory to its value, albeit a contribution that we need to savour carefully.

This investigation has attempted to be explicit about the inevitable pitfalls that face the architect in this type of analysis. With this in mind our investigation has deliberately been structured to construct small elements of knowledge that are not called upon to speak about the city of Tokyo beyond their own extent. In this undertaking the students have been encouraged to develop rigour and openness in their engagement with the unfamiliar and to assume a position of critical self-awareness in their relationship to the material surveyed.

The research is founded in a belief in the positive value of an architectural consideration directed to the physical arrangements of a city. This methodology is in fact explicitly sourced in architectural culture and deliberately avoids calling on external modes of analysis to somehow authorise the outcome. This results in points in the research where the domain of the city and that of architecture demonstrate their irreconcilability.

Contrary to conventional urban investigations and depictions, this position is predicated on the examination of elemental and observable elements of a city, rather than an immersion in broad-scale and generalised conceptions. This position views the composition and arrangement of small ‘ecosystems’ within the city as an index of particular physical and cultural qualities. In some ways this is a type of relearning or unlearning of convention and an opportunity to look once again for the first time.

This is an extremely potent aspect of the research. Implicit in the process is the requirement that the student investigators confront their own and many of the associated conventional understandings of the city.

In these investigations elements as small as vending machines and as large as the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway, their location and their interrelationship with both fixed and mutable elements are considered. Students have examined staircases and the small undercroft spaces they provide, the strange scalar contradiction between these and large-scale infrastructural systems that serve them. Students have inquired into the temporary or makeshift, the shape of spatial interstices and the role of signage and pedestrian trajectory. In such examinations we begin to see the forces that create these very particular arrangements and more importantly the apparently unforeseen consequences of many of these ‘ecosystems’.

We have been unusually fortunate in that our visit to Tokyo coincided with particular developments in a broad body of research into the city of Tokyo undertaken by our hosts. An aspect of this research, which has been continuing since 1991, became a methodological starting point for much of the analysis that is revealed in this publication.

We are extremely grateful to have been exposed to this work and the possibilities for engagement it made available. Assisted by the generosity and involvement of our hosts we have been able to develop a specific research method for investigating this fantastic metropolis in a way that is explicitly open and resistant to closure.

Nigel Bertram and Marika Neustupny have named this investigation By-Product-Tokyo.

Implicit in this naming is the sense that within the investigation itself both a gradual evolution of the research method and the hypothesis took place. To the possible alarm of our hosts, the Made in Tokyo methodology has been extended by Nigel and Marika to incorporate an expanded domain of material whereby the insubstantial, the temporary and the mobile have been incorporated into the analytical method. This methodology is also inflected by our position of externality to the nuanced understanding of our hosts and the short term nature of our engagement. An initial aim to discover where ‘newness’ occurred in the city was replaced through the activity of investigation by the gradual realisation that these ‘ecosystems’ were by-products of processes and historical and contemporary decision making that had quite different aims. These outcomes are very potent examples of the value of the undertaking being shaped by the experience.

Importantly the methodology and knowledge is transportable and this project has instigated a method of urban research that is being redirected to the city of Melbourne in current RMIT design studios. This idea of continuation and refinement is a very important aspect of this project whereby the insights and illumination that the opportunity to travel has provided result in ongoing positive consequences.

The value of By-Product-Tokyo for me lies in the careful and explicit demarcation of its limits and the continual questioning it evokes in both the viewer and the researcher about the nature of the systems under investigation. Through its considered juxtapositions I am drawn to its ability to create a space between the city and architecture where the domain of both can be considered and reflected upon. In this space we may be able to look once again, as if for the first time, at what is entailed in our architectural considerations and how they both structure our conception of the city and influence our production of design. Such a reflection is not about precluding architecture; it is simply an opportunity to consider very carefully what is entailed when we produce architectural design, from a position of pre engagement. This reflective opportunity is a type of by-product of the actual process of engagement with this city.

The research’s primary aim is to reveal small fragments of knowledge about a wonderful city; in so doing, it fuels our fascination for this place leaving each of us to marvel at our own construction of Tokyo.

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1 2

3 4 5

Rem Koolhaas and Brian Mau, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, Rotterdam: 010, 1995, especially the essays ‘Bigness’ and ‘Generic City’.

John Macarthur discusses this relationship in ‘From the air: collage city, aerial photography and the picturesque’, Michael J Ostwald and R John Moore (eds), Re-framing Architecture: Theory, Science and Myth, Sydney: Archadia Press, 2000.

Ibid.

This is William Ellis’ position in ‘Type and context in urbanism: Colin Rowe’s contextualism’, Oppositions, no. 18, 1979, 1-27.

Bart Lootsma makes this observation in ‘The diagram debate, or the schizoid architect’, Archilab Orleans 2001, Saran: Claude Lefort, 2001, 22-23.

by-product-tokyo: notes on an interpretive urbanity Marika Neustupny, Nigel Bertram

Surrounding a small convenience store in Shimokitazawa is a 500mm-wide strip of land, housing an eclectic group of objects and activities (refer p.70). This leftover slither is exactly the sort of useless or wasted space normally discouraged by city councils and ‘good’ design guidelines, but in this case its peculiar nature accommodates perfectly the now traditional array of public-private functions surrounding the ubiquitous conbini.

Whether the strip itself or the idea for its use came first remains ambiguous, but the basic arrangement is similar to small buildings all over the metropolis. Small leftover gaps of private land between building and street, or building and building – resulting from the specific arrangement of land subdivision, methods of building and local regulations – are home to a range of semi-public interfaces. Gas meters, electrical poles, rubbish bins, public telephones, umbrella stands, bicycles, vending machines, pot plants, storage, personal decorations…

Such items fade into insignificance in the larger schemes of cities; they are rarely drawn by architects (except in order to control or hide them), are quietly removed before photographs are taken, or edited-out afterwards. But in the case of the conbini, twenty-four-hour operation means that these apparently ephemeral things are never put away. The building is never without them. The thin strip of land, in itself a non-presence or almost-nothing, gives rise to a seemingly ad-hoc appropriation that in turn defines both the physical image and the almost-public urban amenity of Tokyo’s convenience stores in general. It is now possible to conceive of uses and objects specifically designed for these spaces in front of convenience stores, and the particular role they play in the city.

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between concept and situation It is worth exploring the structure of this event a bit further, to start a discussion of what we mean by ‘by-product’.1 If any actual piece of city, or realised architecture, is a conjunction of generic concepts and specific attributes, then in the example above the generic part is the notion ‘convenience store’. This comes down to branding, hours of operation, a franchise system, approximate size and type of location. The specific facts are more numerous. They include aspects of the particular goods stocked and services provided (the interpretation of ‘convenience’), the idiosyncrasies of the site, local regulations, customs, the manner in which it is understood and used. The sum of all this is the actual convenience store, the one which we can visit .2

What we are calling a by-product occurs in the space that opens up between a conceptual overlay (eg ‘convenience store’) and a specific circumstance, or ‘situation’.

It arises in the approximation of best-fit that allows such a conjunction to occur at all.

Whereas a product-idea is transportable, a by-product cannot exist out of situation. Each one is non-transferable, with its own definite shape, size and disposition. A by-product, though often insignificant in size and reasonably obscure, is a locus of strong and individual character. It is somehow irreducible.

Importantly, however, a by-product belongs to both sides of the equation. It consists of both concept and situation. In the above case, the by-product is the strip of semiinfrastructural convenience store items. What is described is the combination of a physical strip of space and the act of appropriating it in that way. All of the urban events in this book are variations on this type of combination.

A pure functionalism might demand that concept and situation coincide, but what this means in practice is that the difference between them is rendered invisible or ignored.

By-products sit within the gap, and thus make visible the unpredictable results of this difference. In other words, they show the lack-of-fit between concepts and situations. In doing so, they also teach us about the relationship between ourselves and the city. ambiguity and appropriability In west Shinjuku, a bounded grid of streets occupies the site of an ex-water treatment plant in the middle of a dense urban area. The streets appear strangely wide in relation to their congested surroundings. But what is particularly striking about this precinct is that north-south and east-west roads are separated in level to allow continuous, intersection-free movement in each direction. What this fantastic diagram of straightahead flow means, of course, is that the random nature of here-and-there movement required for everyday use becomes difficult. Turning corners, for example, is apparently impossible. Smooth movement in one sense hides interruptions and blockages in another.

Contemporary planning theory would view this as a negative situation, but if we think from the less restricted viewpoint of by-products the apparent excess of this configuration becomes a positive or generative force – it acts as a type of catalyst. From the point of view of circulation, west Shinjuku is in an unbalanced state. It has too much capacity in one direction (linear/horizontal) and not enough in another (oblique/vertical). Unnervingly clear from an aerial or diagrammatic view, at street level pedestrians wanting to change direction negotiate blind spots as they disappear into small staircases squeezed in wherever possible (refer p.48), or cut through lobbies of office towers doubling as public vertical circulation (refer p.50).

These incongruities trigger a series of other events. Lunch-time pamphleteers, lotto stalls and miscellaneous service-providers gather around the almost invisible staircases, utilising the congestion guaranteed by their inadequate size, and the pockets of space left between the double-layered intersections. Office tower lobbies have addresses to both levels of circulation, and their double-height spaces operate in some cases as a type of mini shopping atrium, acknowledging their role as semi-public interior streets.

Such events are undoubtedly ‘very Shinjuku’. But they are perhaps inconceivable within the purely conceptual plan of unimpeded traffic flow which dominates the precinct. The logic of the Plan cannot help but include its own blind spots, and it is these moments of weakness, in combination with the unusually strong didactic intent of the Plan, which would appear to trigger the creation of new forms and situations.

If by-products are to some extent acts of appropriation, then the above examples point to some of the preconditions for appropriability. These west Shinjuku examples include a type of physical or experiential ambiguity, allowing the space for appropriation, together with a strongly excessive quality, which acts as an impetus for appropriation to occur.

The by-product itself is an idiosyncratic act of interpretation allowed by the ‘set’ of these conditions. The unresolved quality of this situation forces us to think on-the-spot.

It demands action on our part, and almost without noticing we have become involved in an apparently determined physical field. compression There is a certain moment, whilst crossing the bridge in front of Shinjuku station’s south exit, where the crowd is funneled through a point at the junction between two large plaza spaces and the adjacent sea of railway lines (refer p.78). It is also exactly at this moment that individuals within the crowd become identifiable enough to be available for face-to-face contact. A small group of protestors with a point to make and leaflets to disperse, choose this moment when the crowd is at both its most vulnerable and its most compact, to assert a disproportionately strong physical presence.

This is a canny act of reading a found physical situation, and similarly to the opportunistic use of cracks in the west Shinjuku grid above, utilises a restriction in flow to create an opportunity for exposure. However in this case the event of appropriation is defined by a ‘live’, fleeting theatre. The obvious physical compaction of the funnel-space is also party to another type of compression, where the energies of a wide surrounding area are focused by the protestors in their actions and strategic positioning, into a single entity or kernel which is insubstantial and temporary but nevertheless a powerful and an incendiary act. The police add another layer of congestion and their presence reinforces the manner in which this hinge has become its own thing.

We can see a similar type of structure at a broad pedestrian crossing in Kabukicho (refer p.64), where the enormity of an urban wall of neon signage is harnessed by mobile advertisers. This backdrop is utilised in conjunction with the dynamic plane of the zebra crossing, and its traffic light-controlled population, to extend and reinforce the presence of the product. It creates an energised and spatial scenario within the confusion of a commercial realm where each individual product and sign is fighting for attention. This act of appropriating backdrop, crossing plane and pulsing crowd into a new ‘unit’ draws a limit around what might otherwise be regarded as unrelated fragments.

In comparison with the more singular case of the convenience store in Shimokitazawa, this by-product event groups together a series of sub-elements which would otherwise have no apparent connection. A complex situation of different agendas and purposes has somehow become a whole, yet the manner in which this happens is transient and could disappear at any moment. Such acts of ‘creative compression’ or grouping of disparate urban effects make apparent the active nature of by-products.

22 23

Because by-product events require interpretation and individual involvement, they are moments of freedom and a type of localised empowerment. This is clearly shown in the case of the south Shinjuku rail yard edge (refer p.80). But the subjectivity that is part of interpretation means that by-products also have definite limits to their field of influence.

It is impossible to have a ‘system’ of by-products. The moment of self-determination

tokyo subway network intra-connections (drawing by Nick Hubicki)

contained within an act of appropriation has boundaries. Although creative and generative, it is unable to be extrapolated. Perhaps because of its fundamentally derivative and dependent nature, a by-product is consigned to the here and now. clues So we are suggesting that these by-product events - point to and are produced by a gap between concept and situation; - are acts of appropriation, triggered by a combination of ambiguity and excess, and; - make a compressed whole from disassociated fragments, with a fleeting power.

Each of these attributes requires a type of speculation and risk-taking. An urbanity of by-products is in the end an interpretive urbanity. On the one hand this means that its existence is arguable, but on the other it means that we are interested, involved, included. To us this interpretability is a very real type of freedom from the deterministic norms of function, type, form and the like. It opens up a new way of thinking about the physical environment and our relationship to it through active inhabitation.

The by-products documented in this book are all to some extent ‘vernacular’ occurrences. As such they are precisely outside of our control as architects or urban planners (even though documenting them is unavoidably an act of appropriation/an attempt to control). From a professional point of view, these by-products are difficult to deal with, even ‘dangerous’. But we are not interested in becoming them, controlling them or designing them. The discovery and subsequent consideration of these instances gives us clues and inspiration to think and work with an eye to relationships between things rather than fixating on the things themselves. The unpredictability and constant newness of such occurrences keeps us on our toes.

But in order to be able to utilise the vernacular occurrence as a ‘clue’, it is necessary to distance oneself from its immediate appearance. If the delight of the research is in the discovery of these events, the real labour is contained in the analytical dissection of their workings. It is one thing to learn to love the world as we find it, and quite another to move towards harnessing this unconscious energy. We are not presenting this material as an alternative to conscious work; not losing ourselves in the dreamlike qualities of ephemera, but instead trying to think clearly about the important role played by such things as ephemera and dream-like qualities. Our aim in this respect is a type of ‘profane illumination’.3

1

2

3

24 25

Generally speaking, this means some condition produced extra to the primary aim of a particular action. We are referring also to the use of the term ‘by-product’ by the Made in Tokyo project. See ‘10 Keywords’, in M Kaijima, J Kuroda, Y Tsukamoto, Made in Tokyo, Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing, 2001, 30.

Even though the convenience store function is itself fragmented, given that the operation of any one example relies on the distribution of countless other similar events across multiple sites in the city.

A term used by Benjamin, for example: ‘...the most passionate investigation of the hashish trance will not teach us half as much about thinking (which is eminently narcotic), as the profane illumination of thinking about the hashish trance.’ Walter Benjamin, ‘Surrealism: the last snapshot of the European intelligentsia’, in Reflections, New York: Schocken Books, 1986, 190.

ds oi lv i ra

n

s za

rs

t ke

b et

a pl

94

ng i rd do n ve b on c ch

y

54

b

50

e

i

en

a at

ttl

62

s (le

m

e

no

om h

46

n st

io at

40

n co

p tri s

38

convenience/neat fit

36

overlap/messy fit

improvisation/temporary fit

56

ki

em

os

pt

k

y

to

si

n bi

60

i

w

au

eb

to

o

s)

48

s ou

fe

pa

rk

y

bo

c

64

n on

hu

ec

m

tio

an

ns

ck

st

78

rs ai

lo

ea

bb

ot pr

70

ng pi

in

ca

m

66

fra

t es

44

p tri

ra er bt su

e ur ct ts ru

is in

a ne

n

84

ca ar

sig

de

n

s

sy

a ho

74

c po

i sta m ste

s

90 82 80

72

k ac

nt ca va k r pe su iv lr i ra

88

ex

ve

ce

o nd

ss

i

in

l fil

92

io ct se er nt s

d ar ky c ba ks s io er ve sie t en em ic nt s gn

by-product categories Although any of the situations documented can be thought of in more than one sense, we have made a provisional grouping in relation to the notions discussed above, as another version of the groupings of location and theme suggested by the research method.

The first category is what might be called a classic by-product use (such as the utilisation of excess spaces under expressways, etc) in which a singular aim produces a surplus condition and this is appropriated in a way somehow perfectly suited to its physical situation. This could be read as a purely physical and non-moral type of functionalism, although many of the examples display a complexity and interactivity of use that extends this simple volumetric equation.

The second and third categories are harder to pin down, but just as real. These range from literal ephemera such as temporary occupation of a place by pamphleteers, to a creative type of ‘reading’, to an overlap condition between two or more independently-conceived systems where some further messy thing is created by their blindness to each other.

research

29

themes and locations The research project as a whole can be read alternatively as a fragmentary description of each particular location through a number of individually-biased points of view (y-axis), or as cumulative articulations of certain urban phenomena through their role in locations of differing scale and purpose (x-axis). A third understanding is as a collection of unrelated events, with varying degrees of adjacency. A selection of twenty-four of these events out of a total of seventy has been made for this book. Possible understandings of the urban environment are suggested by cross-links.

28

By focusing on the pieces as complete entities in themselves, the bigger picture of the city is left open and is free to keep changing. Hence this study doesn’t seek or provide any general (abstract) theories on what ‘Tokyo is’; rather it collects an open-ended pile of small concrete situations.

The method was to look for functioning particularities rather than determining rules.

The work considers Tokyo through its concrete urban product. However, our definition of product was not a singular item in an industrial sense, but rather a functioning, living system. The students spent their short time searching for small ‘ecosystems’ of forms and/or events and temporarily separating or untangling these things from their context in order to study them as discrete units without worrying about their place in the larger scheme of the city.

Tokyo has been subjected to a continuous process of rebuilding – after fires, floods, earthquakes, war, and demolition associated with rapid economic development. Following this tradition, the project started with the somewhat abstract aim of trying to identify ways in which ‘newness’ appeared in this city and influenced inhabitation.

notes on method

quasi/excess infrastructures

commercial infrastructures

promotional orientation

diversified retail forms

vertical links

filled gaps/pockets

unfilled gaps/holes

bottlenecks and shortcuts

permanently makeshift

scattered services

40

36

38

au

k

to

ou

no

m

to

s

i

ns

west shinjuku io

t ec

nn

in

co

nb co

n

tio

sta

k

s io

p

i str

50

48

46

44

y

e

in

fr

irs

c tru

sta

rk

ng

pa

di

as

k

s)

ar

s (le

ho

c ne

e

bb

lo

ttl

m

bo

ho

v

en

do

re

tu

56

54

ac

y

h

pt em

be

sig

pi

ns

m ca

ng

66

64

62

60

i

er bt su

sie

n

shimokitazawa s de

t

ca

en

ar

em

ve

tic

a ne ra

an

o

um

h

y

eb

a at

w

n fe

74

72

70

ir

sta

ks

c ba

t

se

s

za

la

tp

ke

c po

c

p

tri

is

in

b on

84

82

80

78

n sig

s

s

s

m ste sy

sk io rk e up

il

ra

r

e riv

t

es

ot

pr

shibuya

south shinjuku

east shinjuku

odaiba

shinjuku station

94

92

90

88

o

in

fil

ss ce

n tio ec rs te in

s id vo il ra

ex

l

rd ya ck ba t an

nd

c va

ve

30

31

shimokitazawa

shibuya

shinjuku

n yam a

o t e l in e

tokyo bay

odaiba

Shinjuku was chosen as the central research site due to its complex mixture of many types of newness, including what we have called ‘brand new’: large-scale tabula-rasa redevelopment (west); ‘constantly new’: continual piecemeal change (east) and ‘renew’: renewal of large sections of vacated land within an existing fabric (south). The three sectors of Shinjuku were paired with three locations of comparative characteristics (Odaiba, Shimokitazawa and south Shibuya respectively) for parallel investigation. The students spent a week investigating each of these sites, and an additional short period for collating and re-working their original drawings, photographs and notes. The work in this publication has been re-edited in Melbourne, but retains the flavour and much of the actual product of the on-location field work.

In the first week, the ten students caught trains directly to Shinjuku station, with each person making their way out from this enormous hub into the surrounding urban area through a different exit, and searching for physical expression of possible relationships between stability and change, in other words attempting to understand how ‘newness’ might be occurring. From these beginnings a research trajectory was elaborated for each person, developing and re-defining itself over the course of the project. These ten themes are listed on the following page.

beginning the research

odaiba

west

SHINJUKU STATION

south

east

shibuya

shimokitazawa

32

33

s

a zaw

kita

o him

shin

ya

ibu

y am a n

akihabara

o

uen

za

gin

tokyo

e

sh

ku ro lin

juku

bu

ike e ot

aib

od a

shi n

aga

wa

themes

0

1

5km

Scattered services Jessica Lynch

(forms of circulation and connection, evolving functions and redundancy)

Quasi/excess infrastructures Nick Hubicki

(private-public loops in underground spaces)

Commercial infrastructures Jonothan Cowle

(advertising and signage becoming urban and spatial)

Promotional orientation Yiyan Lim

(multiplication and proliferation of format and choice)

Diversified retail forms Joseph Reyes

(formal results of vertical movement, staircases and adjacency)

Vertical links Alan Kueh

(use, occupation and creation of surplus space)

Filled gaps/pockets Paul Dash

(typologies of temporary structures/provisional accommodation)

Permanently makeshift Zoe Geyer

(form and potential of permanent and temporary absences)

Unfilled gaps/holes Erica Diakoff

(critical points of density, flow, and congestion)

Bottlenecks and shortcuts Matt Herbert

(urban/architectural/civic formations of vending and other machines)

34 35

100m

p.36

p.38

p.40

KIOSK TO CONBINI Joseph Reyes

STRIP STATION Paul Dash

AUTONOMOUS CONNECTIONS Nick Hubicki

Shinjuku station is difficult to draw. It is difficult to maintain a clear mental image of its physical extent. It is difficult to understand when exactly you have left or entered it. Four national railway lines, two private railway lines and three subway lines intersect with four department stores and tie together a mass of underground passages and countless exits extending into the exterior and interior of the surrounding city. What we call the station is actually a clustering together of independent developments with their own momentum, each gaining by association with the idea of a whole.

Shinjuku Station

37

kiosk to conbini

A

B

Kiosk to conbini: The platforms at Shinjuku station are home to a number of small kiosks providing a fairly set menu of goods for commuters. Many of these are operated by convenience store (conbini) chains and carry the same logos. The installation of kiosks continues further away from the platforms themselves and they increase in size offering an expanding range of items for sale. Outside the station the usual collection of small convenience stores within building tenancies expands the series once more. There is an evident telescoping series of forms, which repeat and multiply the choice or format available for consuming different extents of the same range of items. This multiplicity of form caters for a range of personal tastes in how to consume, and provides an image of variety and choice in excess of that actually present in the products themselves.

36

C

B

D

C

Shinjuku S u Station S o

underground network

A

rail lines

D

50m intervals

Diversified Retail Forms

A

C

kiosk to conbini

photo booth

concourse mini-conbini (consolidated): 7am-12am newspapers, magazines, food, drinks

three sides of platform kiosk are open for exchange

platform kiosk (basic unit): 5am-10pm newspapers, magazines, food, drinks

l lin

es

kiosk

store entry

es l lin

rai

KIOSK (1 of 2)

rai

stair down to subway

convenience store: 24 hours newspapers, magazines, food, drinks

exit to street

to yamanote line

drink + cigarette dispenser

platform seating

concourse kiosk (distributed): 7am-12am newspapers, magazines, food, drinks

drink dispenser + disposal

drink dispenser + disposal

advertising

D

public telephones

B

entry

recycling bins

adjacent restaurant

exit to street

Diversified Retail Forms

studio alta

newspapers, magazines, food, drink

photo booth, shop and processing service

38

39

shinjuku station

takashimaya times square

times square arcade

strip station

aido

hu k

kos

ave

shin minami strip station

shin minami entry plaza

shin minami strip station

koshu kaido avenue

jr tracks

shinjuku station

takashimaya times square

Strip station: The New South (Shin Minami) entrance of Shinjuku station draws commuter platforms into direct contact with recent south-side commercial developments. Rather than the station being an identifiable building or unit of space, this section is composed of a ribbon-like surface. The programmatic content behind this strip is of little consequence, with the wall surface defining the station as simply a user-interface between interior and exterior. Ticket machines, platform entries and overhead directional signage are interspersed with advertising to the Times Square department store and various non-public station accommodation.

The thinness and extension of the strip’s surface area emphasises horizontal connectivity, whilst taking advantage of the necessity for lengthy and circuitous circulation.

Filled Gaps/Pockets

times square advertising

strip station

to takashimaya dept store

times square advertising

good times restaurant

travel agency ticket machines

station office

ticket bollards

times square advertising

platform ramps

overhead signage

Filled Gaps/Pockets

to shinjuku jr tracks

41

autonomous connections

view from overpass

area plan

40 system view

context view

overpass acts as plaza extension

retail plaza/corporate plaza

ground level connections

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

autonomous connections

VP: view from lower rail concourse

Autonomous connections: Rather than simply being links (and thereby subservient to the things they are joining), many enormous infrastructural forms and assemblages throughout the city which carry an image of functional connectivity are in many ways autonomous.

The Odakyu retail plaza extension in west Shinjuku is an example of this where the elements of the plaza exist as objects that connect ‘nothing with nothing’, or themselves to themselves. Despite a feeling of comprehension afforded by cross level visual relationships, the collection of infrastructural pieces occurring at this station plaza forms a series of adjacent signs of connectivity perhaps more than it functions as a truly interconnected circulatory network. These monumental elements work to obstruct the inhabitation of the plaza space as the complete entity that its planimetric form might imply.

west shinjuku odakyu plaza

KEY A JR exit/odakyu department store B pedestrian overpass/plaza extension C odakyu building/micro golf range D taxi chute E office building with signage F bus terminal

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

42 43

100m

p.44

p.46

p.48

p.50

VENDO HOARDING Jessica Lynch

HOME(LESS) PARK Zoe Geyer

BOTTLENECK STAIRS Matt Herbert, Alan Kueh

LOBBY INFRASTRUCTURE Jonothan Cowle

Brand new (i): On the site of a previous water filtration plant a new urban area was constructed from the mid-1960s, in the middle of one of the densest areas of Tokyo.

Streets were laid out in a regular grid, with north-south and east-west streets separated in elevation to avoid intersections. This has resulted in two effective ground levels with most buildings having main entrances to both. The ‘natural’ ground level is ambiguous, due to the fall of the land which passes from the upper level on the west side to the lower level on the east side. Hence the sensation of the ground being doubled or delaminated, and moments of surprise where what is assumed to be underground turns out to be natural ground, and vice versa.

West Shinjuku

44

45 disused building

billboard

billboard facing major road

vendo hoarding

sealed entrance

vending machines

building entrance

building entrance

apartment building

Vendo hoarding: Vending machines act both contingently and independently. Because of their small scale and self-contained functional nature they can easily adapt to a given physical environment by slotting neatly into gaps, or grouping together to form new assemblages that almost resemble buildings. They are gathered throughout the city in established and repeated formal arrangements, and can even outlast the buildings they stand in front of, continuing to function in front of building sites during demolition and rebuilding or, as in this case, joining together to form the hoarding itself. An abundance of these apparently temporary and scattered things has become a permanent part of the city’s form, and their regularity is relied on like infrastructure.

hoarding wall, west shinjuku

Scattered Services

vendo hoarding

truck loading bay

vending machines

vending machines

building wall

access to upper level

carpark

vending machines

gravel storage

apartment building

ticket machines

depot wall, south shinjuku

carpark wall, kabukicho

Scattered Services

47

string

rope

tarpaulin

tree

night locations

home(less) park

type A: semi-permanent tarpaulin construction

tree

46 entry

ropes type B: semi-permanent cardboard construction

log

cardboard boxes

1st tarpaulin

fence

2nd tarpaulin

tape

crates

bicycle

type C: transitory cardboard ground-plane (expanded)

blanket + cardboard

cardboard

day locations

type D: mobile cardboard ground-plane (expanded)

park bench backpack

Home(less) park: The many lightweight structures utilised by the residents of Shinjuku Park fall into a handful of loose formal arrangements. Opportunistic ways of using a readily available spatial situation, such as leaning against an existing fence, or material, such as blue plastic tarpaulins, have become a type of accepted standard and generated a more or less stable language of physical urban arrangements. Here located in a park where conveniently located public toilet blocks and water taps provide permanent services, these groups of structures make a type of enduring camping-village, with an uncanny consistency to their makeshift appearance.

Permanently Makeshift

home(less) park

TYPE A (ii)

TYPE A (i)

TYPE D

TYPE C

TYPE B

Permanently Makeshift

s

retaining wall

pamphleteers at point of maximum congestion

vegetation

ad

tra

staircase

j

r ve

to la in d

lower road level

upper road level

er r oa

upp

subway entrance

bottleneck condition with retaining wall, stair and shortcut passage under stair

io at st uk u

bottleneck stairs

ut

er

ro

tc

l

ho r

ow

Sh to

n to r la ve

49 tra

48 Bottleneck stairs: In the grid of west Shinjuku, big broad streets pass over and under each other allowing for continuous movement in straight lines without intersections. Within this idealised diagram of unrestricted flow, vertical circulation becomes a limitation and creates pressure in the system.

Narrow staircases, which formally appear as an afterthought, have been squeezed in at the corners of these ‘non-intersections’ to allow pedestrians to change level and direction. In these constricted areas concentrations of people reach high densities during peak periods (in an area where dispersal is the norm), and a number of smaller services such as kiosks, lotto stalls and lunch venues take advantage of the compressed volume of traffic.

Bottlenecks and Shortcuts

bottleneck stairs

intersection undercroft views

D

C

A

B

intersection stairs, retaining walls and vegetation

Bottlenecks and Shortcuts

50

51

west shinjuku: chuo dori avenue, underground passage

Lobby infrastructure: In west Shinjuku, two ‘ground’ levels with approximately equal emphasis result in many corporate towers having a double-floor lobby. In the absence of other means of general vertical circulation in the area these lobbies, in addition to their corporate function, act as de-facto public circulation between levels. The continual passage of public traffic is responded to by commercial

lobby infrastructure

activities occurring in the corporate foyers, creating ‘mini-atrium shopping centre lobbies’. A new type is generated as a by-product of both lack (not enough vertical circulation) and excess (two ground levels).

Commercial Infrastructures

lobby infrastructure

passageways as public space: an underground protest

underground infrastructure versus street layout

access to subway

atrium lobby

retail

public space

open air lobby/ infrastructure

private towers versus public underground

public space

shinjuku centre building

interior lobby/ infrastructure

retail shinjuku station

Commercial Infrastructures

52 53

100m

p.54

p.56

BEACH CAMPING Zoe Geyer

EMPTY SIGNS Nick Hubicki

Brand new (ii): In the early 1990s a huge new island of reclaimed land was constructed in Tokyo Bay. The area was originally planned to be a model city centre for the twenty-first century, and was also the site of the planned 1996 world urban expo – Tokyo Frontier. After the burst of Japan’s bubble economy, the development was shown to be running an enormous deficit, and a new governor of Tokyo was elected on a platform of suspending the project.

Now the issue is what to do with this highly serviced and publicised space. Its future is still in question, and large tracts of land remain vacant. In the meantime, hotels, amusement parks, an artificial beach and themed shopping centres have filled some of the gap, and the island is developing a reputation as something of a romantic spot for young couples.

Odaiba

55

grass

type A: hovering on a plot of land

backpack

beach camping

grocery bag

54 take away food

boardwalk

type B: utilising existing topography

newspaper

basket

flask

introverted

extroverted

blanket

packaging

fold up table

type D: constructing amenities

packed food

similar degrees of assemblage, different outcomes

type C: establishing a moisture barrier

shopping bag

modes of recreational occupation

Beach Camping: The ‘fake’ beach of Odaiba performs a very real function as an entertainment realm within Tokyo. The island destination allows separation from the city proper, and this prompts various degrees of preparation for outings, from the casualness of lunch breaks to fully-catered day-trips. The provision of a resort-type atmosphere within the metropolis produces a range of juxtapositions between leisure time and everyday life, and is utilised in a delicately ad-hoc manner.

Permanently Makeshift

beach camping

Permanently Makeshift

56

57

empty signs

Empty Signs: In the patent barrenness of a largely unoccupied reclaimed landscape, headquarter buildings for various corporations (Fuji TV, Telecom) still rely on the metropolis for their scale and ‘sign’quality. In the current situation of a halfcompleted plan, their monumentality gives them the presence of ruins set within a nolonger-productive landscape. The muscular architectural imagery of infrastructure and connectivity is rendered folly-like, despite their actual size.

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

empty signs

program

elevation

program

tower block type + void

vertical circulation/ void

vertical void

combination elements

circulation elevation

slab block type +vertical void

loops/ circuits

horizontal circulatory elements (program)

structural elements (faux circulation)

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

tower block type +void

vertical circulatory elements

58 59

100m

p.60

p.62

p.64

p.66

WEB OF ENTICEMENT Zoe Geyer

YATAI Joseph Reyes

HUMAN SIEVE Yiyan Lim

SUBTERRANEAN ARCADES Jonothan Cowle

Constantly new (i): Entertainment is a traditional focus of this commercial area, which includes the infamous Kabukicho district. The tiny streets are packed full of bars, restaurants and karaoke venues, all layered over one another and entwined with business, retail functions and ‘red light’ area.

The micro-scale of activities and streets, together with temporary and permanent signs, vending machines, scooters, mobile stalls, pamphlet advertising and a continual stream of people, make an environment of dynamism and clutter. These small things are able to change very quickly, making a continuum of piecemeal change.

East Shinjuku

61

web of enticement

Web of enticement: A brothel in Kabukicho is supported by an extensive but surreptitious network of signage, with a striking graphic tied to street poles, propped on corners or hand-held at various strategic locations between the building and Shinjuku station. For those attentive to such banners, the repetition of signs make this particular business stand out in the street as being somehow significant, but they eventually lead to a destination almost imperceptible as a separate entity within a mass of similar enterprises. The clarity of the signage is stronger and more present than the building itself.

A network of anticipation exists between the repeated graphic and the service provided, in which its physical housing is merely incidental.

60 locale: east shinjuku

station plaza

locale: kabukicho

brothel

Permanently Makeshift

web of enticement

Permanently Makeshift

63

yatai

canvas tarpaulin is unfixed to timber frame, stretched taut by the sandbag anchors

A

advertising cloth

lantern

sandbags for anchoring

Yatai: When normal business hours finish, a range of secondary activities makes use of the newly available street space in this entertainment precinct.

Temporary, yet utterly regular, vehicles attach themselves to various parts of urban structure and provide a second layer of interior space. The interest here is in the ways in which these almost institutionalised casual events assess and make opportunistic use of their more permanent surroundings.

Their physical situation and unfolding mode of operation points to and capitalises on the slack between day and night urbanities.

62 2-wheel cart with removable masonry block supports

cart handle

night entertainment zones

C

B

context environment

A

Diversified Retail Forms

yatai

sandbags for anchoring

canvas tarpaulin fixed to frame by rope. sandbag anchors hung off existing fence keeps the structure taut

C

lantern

canvas tarpaulin wrapped around timber frame and stretched taut by sandbag anchors

B

fence to public area

generator

cart handles/ towel racks

stool seating

sandbag anchors

cart handle

lanterns

generator

2-wheel cart with removable masonry block supports

Diversified Retail Forms

context environment

context environment

64

65

signage and building support

signage only

human sieve

crowd

crowd

Human sieve: The relationship between signage, urban form and human interaction makes a composite entity at a busy intersection. A mass of signs along the street elevation transitions smoothly from multi-storey billboards at a high level to gradually more specific and smaller scale information on the way down to ground. At the base of this wall of signage, teams of promotional staff wearing brightly coloured advertising jackets move to target pedestrians who arrive in groups synchronised by the pedestrian crossing lights. The graphic pulsing of neon signs above is continued by the pulsing physical movements of these ‘human advertisements’ who move out to greet the steady waves of their customers on the horizontal plane of the intersection.

Promotional Orientation

human sieve

flashing/moving advertisement

static advertisement

Promotional Orientation

66

67

east shinjuku: ‘subnade’ underground shopping mall

subterranean arcades

Subterranean arcades: Underground streets of public circulation are tugged and influenced by the requirements of both public infrastructure and large retail chains.

Commercial enterprise and city transport feed each other in an expansion of underground territory that does not respect the comparatively clear separation of private and public property above. It is a development cycle that ambiguously mixes private rail networks owned by and linked to department stores, state-run services, individual commercial enterprises, and general public circulation under the surface of busy intersections.

Commercial Infrastructures

subterranean arcades

shibuya: department stores directly linked to underground shopping mall

Commercial Infrastructures

68 69

100m

p.70

p.72

p.74

CONBINI STRIP Jessica Lynch

POCKET PLAZAS Paul Dash

STAIR SETBACKS Alan Kueh

Constantly new (ii): A traditional suburban commercial centre surrounded by lowlevel detached houses, Shimokitazawa has recently blossomed into a fashionable destination on a metropolitan scale. This is partly due to its situation at the crossing of two major train lines leading from Shibuya and Shinjuku to the desirable western suburbs. The area between the traditional commercial core around the station and the surrounding suburb is in a process of transformation from predominantly residential to commercial and other uses, and is currently in a state of mixed morphology. The small scale of available real estate parcels lends itself to a particular type of boutique development, with an emphasis on second-hand goods and hip youth culture.

Shimokitazawa

70

71

conbini strip

drink vending machines

power pole

plastic crates potted plants

entrance

umbrella stand

potted plants rubbish bin can bins magazine bin

drink vending machine public telephone

Scattered Services

conbini strip

cigarette shop accessed through gap between vending machines

cigarette machine

road edge

07

01 08

06 05

03 02

04

27

11

10

29

26

28

12

32

31

14

25

011

30

37

13

24

33 34

16 15

36

23

35

011

17 20

22

21

19

Scattered Services

18

vending machine density

Conbini strip: The space surrounding this convenience store is the location of a variety of sitespecific and ad-hoc elements: decoration, signage, retail activity, greenery, storage, and public services.

Such leftover space is used all over the city by a variety of compact services and products, as well as being the location for an eclectic array of items just stored there. It remains ambiguous whether the development of items such as thinner (250-300mmwide) vending machines that fit exactly in narrower strips have been designed specifically for such frequent situations, or have just been expertly placed.

73

pocket plazas

3. plain cut/penny’s

2. marios/non-non

1. marie claire boutique

72 planting

paving

canopy

planting

bollards

street light

plinth

canopy

cobbled paving

planter box

plantings

canopy

3

2

1

Pocket plazas: A typical sector of housing within perimeter shopping streets is being substantially eroded by the expansion inwards of the surrounding commercial activity and a different social group. This reasonably subtle type of urban development has generated a series of used gaps as spatial by-product. Keeping within the volume and plot size limitations of the existing fabric, new setback frontages have been introduced to provide visibility and differentiation to commercial shopfronts. In narrow half-residential streets typically lined with fences, these generate a series of ‘pocket plazas’ on private land that are both a commercial drawcard and act as a smooth extension of the public street space in an area without footpaths.

Filled Gaps/Pockets

pocket plazas

6. crepes

5. sanwa bank

4. foster sister

sunken plaza

planting

paving

canopy

planter box

seat

canopy

phone booth

ashtray

plinth

planter box

5

6

4

Filled Gaps/Pockets

74

75

stair setbacks

shimokitazawa stair configuration varieties

covered stair no setback

expressed stair front setback

Vertical Links

stair setbacks

Stair setbacks: Specific spatial limitations on the retail development in Shimokitazawa have resulted in a series of new commercial building types evolving on the small residential-scale sites. These tend to incorporate basement shops with external courtyards and upper level shops with separate access from street level. In order to both achieve maximum shop window frontage and a direct line of access to all tenants, the different tenancies have been variously held back from the street to incorporate external staircases. The space and experience of the street has been dramatically altered by the deep sense of basement courtyards and the addition of upper level publicly accessible space. The resultant staircases add a new formal and circulatory complexity similar to that created when old mansions are subdivided into separate tenancies.

basement courtyard, external stair and half-setback combination

side setback with independent external access

Vertical Links

76 77

100m

p.78

p.80

p.82

p.84

PROTEST Matt Herbert

RAIL RIVER Erica Diakoff

SUPER KIOSKS Joseph Reyes

SIGN SYSTEMS Yiyan Lim

Re-new (i): The sea of exposed railway lines south of the station form a chasm within the core of Shinjuku, and a barrier to smooth pedestrian access. However, the recent construction of large commercial developments and office buildings around this void and pushing over the edges of the tracks, has brought with it elevated decking, landscaping and various bridge-links which allow this ‘back’ space to be utilised.

This new edge has redefined the role of the railway yards, and is tending towards a continuous concourse level between Shinjuku and Yoyogi stations.

South Shinjuku

79

protest

police blockade

6

public

JR shinjuku station

Protest: When something big and broad is constricted, or when a direct route is blocked, the resultant congestion creates new opportunities for exposure and physical contact. Opposite the station entrance at south Shinjuku, small advertisers and groups of political activists choose the corner which forms the narrowest point between two broad areas of public circulation to hand out pamphlets and make themselves seen and heard. The guaranteed concentration of traffic flow is further impeded by this by-product activity generating a vicious circle of congestion which is, in many ways, beneficial. Congestion generates activity generates congestion.

78 rail tracks

JR station

office towers

bridge

protestors

JR station

takashimaya department store

protest point

Bottlenecks and Shortcuts

bottleneck

protest

dogleg combined with constriction in width

concourse

overpass

bridge over rail lines

JR shinjuku station

station

protest point (point of greatest density)

road barriers

Bottlenecks and Shortcuts

pedestrian overpass

80

81

rail river

4

3

2

1

1

8

7

2

6

3

4

5

viewing edge

Takashimaya department store

Unfilled Gaps/Holes

rail river

8

7

6

5

Rail river: The large hole in south Shinjuku is an unavoidable sideeffect of railway infrastructure, but also provides something in short supply: open space with views and sunlight.

New commercial development south of the station has turned to face this previous industrial ‘back’ and located decks with public seating and cafes facing over the railyards. Lunchtime and weekend visitors sit looking out over the view, and enjoying the relative tranquility, as if it really were a river.

The edge of this hole has become used in a way that is more to do with its accidental benefits than its core original purpose, and the desire for a certain type of contemporary urban environment has been grafted onto the closest fit available.

Unfilled Gaps/Holes

83

super kiosks

home appliances store and cafe

F

eddie bauer cafe

G

Super kiosks: A series of apparently small pavilions are strung along the base of recent high-rise commercial and corporate development, on the deck above a covered area of train lines.

These detached buildings, many with two levels, contain franchised food outlets, restaurants, gift shops, and so on. In their size, functions and ‘object’ nature they physically resemble more suburban typologies brought into the middle of one of the densest parts of Tokyo. As a formal group, they make a super-scaled version of conventional street kiosks or food stalls in their relationship to the towers behind.

82 development tendency

train station

current development

recent retail development

established retail

existing condition

chiaro coffee and cake

H

E

G

F

subject site: plaza

H

D

C

B

A

Diversified Retail Forms

konne cafe

B

super kiosks

hiroshima restaurant

A

bravo restaurant

E

starbucks coffee

C

Diversified Retail Forms

italian restaurant

D

84

85

building complex

signage and building support

signage only

sign systems

relationships between signboards, buildings and destinations

three-dimensional text mounted on facade promoting activity on adjacent floor level

advertisement placed directly inside window by tenant

advertisement including directions to an activity located in another building

tower of sign boards branching from taller building as miniature of its vertical organisation

Promotional Orientation

sign systems

Sign Systems: The overwhelming quantity of signage in the city is multiplied by an equally overwhelming variety of ways of attaching and relating to its building-support.

When this is combined with different scales and distances of sign-audience and sign-content, it results in a complex set of permutations and arrangements. The variables of sign language, support language and content language enter into a series of relationships with building language so that the conglomeration is left open and ambiguous as to its core purpose.

sign board describing each floor level’s activities

old shop-houses

direct advertising via window display

floor level linked signage tower

yoyogi station exit: an accumulation of building parts and attached signage

Promotional Orientation

yoyogi station

spillage of sale items onto footpath

neon sign

86 87

100m

p.88

p.90

p.92

p.94

VENDO INFILL Jessica Lynch

VACANT BACKYARD Erica Diakoff

RAIL VOIDS Paul Dash

EXCESS INTERSECTION Nick Hubicki

Re-new (ii): A slither of land has recently been created by the rationalisation of tracks along the Yamanote line leading out of Shibuya station. This slither is sandwiched between the rail tracks, the canal-like Shibuya River, an elevated private railway, and a major highway, in an area characterised by scattered light industry, low-rise storage buildings and open carparks. The surplus rail track space is now a single row of up-market multi-storey office buildings, decisively re-scaling the area.

This upgrade and densification of an isolated parcel of land, set deep behind the main road, has produced a ripple effect into the area left between. Small streets and ad-hoc activities can now be experienced within a multi-scaled and multi-focussed precinct.

Shibuya

88

89

vendo infill

shu

xpr to e

ess

y wa

pedestian thoroughfare

small bar

Vendo infill: Vending machines exist at one end of a continuous scale of urban furniture, from small to large. A tapering gap left beneath the Yamanote line overpass has the effect of sorting objects according to their depth and thinness. An almost didactic series is presented to us along this strip, ranging from small bar to photocopy shop to vending machine and rubbish bin, each taking their place according to a logic of maximum compaction and utilisation of surface area.

drink machine

ion

pla

tfor m

retaining wall

drink machine

can recycling

drink machine store room

narrow shop

stat

intersection of yamanote line and shuto expressway

JR

line s

Scattered Services

vendo infill

44

43 42

41

40

02

39

01

38

05

03 04

37

06

07

08

36

34 33

12

17

32

m eij id or i

11

35

10

09

31

14

28

29

16

13

30

15

27

19

18

vending machine density: clustered around and under rail lines and other infrastructure

45

46

ay ssw expre shuto

20

tok yu line

shibuya station

26

21

25

23

22

e lin te no ma ya

24

sh ibu ya

riv er

Scattered Services

90

91

vacant backyard

e

sit

un

bo

ry

da

Unfilled Gaps/Holes

temporary appropriation/pocket park, kabukicho

site scraped clean to boundaries, midorigaoka

vacant backyard

temporary increase in sunlight to clothes lines, toritsu daigaku

temporary shrine blessing imminent construction, midorigaoka

Unfilled Gaps/Holes

Vacant backyard: A by-product of continuous urban development is that buildings are always disappearing. In Tokyo this is particularly graphic as entire structures can disappear in a single day, with added effect due to the close proximity of other building volumes. Sites are scraped clean and absolutely flat from boundary to boundary, ready for the next phase in a short cycle of renewal. The small holes created by this process move around the city. A fairly stable percentage of open space is generated by this period of ‘no building’ (usually considered unproductive) in a constant and random cycle of development. Sunlight, privacy, and the sense of how big your backyard is can change dramatically over a period of weeks.

93

rail voids

housing facades infill residential

under-rail housing, tokyu toyoko line

92 under-rail housing and canal housing

shibuya canal housing

rail housing structural constraint

tokyu rail line

tokyu rail housing

Filled Gaps/Pockets

rail voids

corporate lobbies infill towers

corporate towers, former rail yards

New corporate infill towers are without plazas due to their restricted site width. In compensation, the ground floor foyers are overly generous, occupying the whole footprint

rail line

basement

plaza/lobby road buildings

new infill offices

former rail yards

Filled Gaps/Pockets

new lobby expansion

Rail voids: Two series of infill developments exist in close proximity. A strip of small residences works within the constraint of the railway structure above, and in the process mirrors the arrangement of canal-front housing opposite. Across the tracks, another strip of office towers fills a different type of leftover rail-space, but with a similar effect of repetition. Although towers are not often regarded as an ‘infill’ type of building, they obtain a strength here by working in a group. To alleviate the obvious lack of ground floor plaza surface, each has a glazed lobby extending the pedestrian’s view through the building to the tracks beyond.

95

A

shibuya station/shuto nexus

excess intersection

Excess intersection: The pedestrian overpass in Shibuya adds a distorted but coherent figure within the many divergent trajectories present at this verticallylayered ‘non-intersection’.

Raised train station, overhead expressway, bus station plaza, roadway, and mid-level pedestrian link combine in an assemblage of bridging and connecting elements, whilst maintaining their totally separate functions and successfully avoiding contact with each other.

Whereas such a conflict of purposes might generally produce a fractured urban experience, here a tangible and self-reinforcing urban scene is made as a byproduct of functionally disparate elements, each with their own need for continuity.

94

B

C

C

B

A

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

site with expressway

site without aerial infrastructure

excess intersection

area context

pedestrian overpass/ street connections

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures

west shinjuku odakyu plaza as comparison

iconography

98 99

Scattered Services Jessica Lynch

Permanently Makeshift Zoe Geyer

100 101

Bottlenecks and Shortcuts Matt Herbert

Unfilled Gaps/Holes Erica Diakoff

102 103

Filled Gaps/Pockets Paul Dash

Vertical Links Alan Kueh

104 105

Diversified Retail Forms Joseph Reyes

51st floor YOU ARE HERE (on the 51st floor)

Promotional Orientation Yiyan Lim

106 107

Commercial Infrastructures Jonothan Cowle

Quasi/Excess Infrastructures Nick Hubicki

108 109

bibliography

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

Thomas Daniell (guest editor), ‘Japan’ issue, Archis magazine, Rotterdam: Netherlands Architecture Institute, May 1999. (With texts by Thomas Daniell, Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama, Yoshitake Doi, Akira Suzuki, Hajima Yatsuka, Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Carola Hein.)

Takashi Homma, Tokyo Suburbia, Tokyo: Korinsha Press & Co. Ltd, 1998. (With texts by Momoyo Kaijima, Shinji Miyadai.)

Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Made in Tokyo, Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing, 2001.

David Price, Travels in Japan, London: Olive Hill House, 1987.

Donald Richie, A Lateral View: Essays on Contemporary Japan, Tokyo: Japan Times, 1987.

Donald Richie and Joel Sackett, Tokyo: A View of the City, London: Reaktion, 1999.

Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake, New York: Knopf, 1983.

Barrie Shelton, Learning from the Japanese City: West meets East in Urban Design, London and New York: E & FN Spon, 1999.

David Stewart, The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture: 1868 to the Present, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1987.

Akira Suzuki, Do Android Crows fly over the Skies of an Electronic Tokyo?: The City Landscapes of Japan, London: Architectural Association, 2000.

Arira Suzuki (ed), Telescope magazine, Tokyo: Workshop for Architecture and Urbanism, 1987-1995. www. telescoweb.com Tokyo Institute of Technology Tsukamoto Architectural Lab and Atelier Bow-wow, Pet Architecture Guide Book, Tokyo: World Photo Press, 2001.

Tokyo Institute of Technology Sakamoto Architectural Lab, Housing Project Tokyo, Tokyo: Tokyo Institute of Technology, 1998.

Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Tokyo Style, Tokyo: Kyoto Shoin Co. Ltd, 1997.

credits Original cover design by Nick Hubicki.

Photographs by Nigel Bertram (endpapers, p.6-7, 12, 26-27, 34, 42, 76, 86, 96-97, 108, 110-111), Paul Dash (p.68), Nick Hubicki (p.52), Jessica Lynch (p.58).

Maps by Taiga Asai and Nicholas Harder.

Explanatory texts on pages 28-96 by Marika Neustupny and Nigel Bertram.

All other photographs, drawings and text by relevant author or student as noted.